Friday, January 03, 2014

Islam Religion or Cult?

Muhammad died of a fever in 632 at the age of 63, with his violent religion spread over most of Arabia. His method of forcing others to convert under duress had several negative consequences, beginning with the civil wars that were immediately engaged in following his death. Many tribes wanted out of Islam and had to be kept in the empire via horrific violence.

Abu Sufyan, the Meccan leader who was literally forced to "embrace" Islam at the point of a sword actually had the last laugh. He skillfully worked his own family into the line of succession and his son, Muawiya, became the heir to Muhammad's empire at the expense of the prophet's own family. In fact, Abu Sufyan almost lived to witness his son and grandson kill off Muhammad's own grandchildren and assume control of the Islamic empire.

Muhammad's failure to leave a clear successor resulted in a deep schism that quickly devolved into violence and persists to this day as the Sunni/Shia conflict. His own family fell apart and literally went to war with each other in the first few years. Thousands of Muslims were killed fighting each other in a battle between Muhammad's favorite wife, Aisha, and his adopted son, Ali.

Infidels fared no better. Through Muhammad's teachings and example, his followers viewed worldly life as a constant physical battle between the House of Peace (Dar al-Salaam) and the House of War (Dar al-Harb). Muslims are instructed to invite their enemies to either embrace Islam, pay jizya (protection money), or die.

Over the next fourteen centuries, the bloody legacy of this extraordinary individual would be a constant challenge to those living on the borders of the Islam’s political power. The violence that Muslim armies would visit on people across North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and into Asia as far as the Indian subcontinent is a tribute to a founder who practiced and promoted subjugation, rape, murder and forced conversion.

In Muhammad's words: "I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.' And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them..." (Bukhari 8:387)

It is certainly the basis not just for modern day terror campaigns against Western infidels (and Hindus and Buddhists) but also the broad apathy that Muslims across the world have to the violence, which is an obvious enabler.

As Indonesian cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir recently put it, "If the West wants to have peace, then they have to accept Islamic rule."